What was UK-style European philosophy about, postgraduates? What was it for? No one will remember, in time. The whole academic ecosystem – the departments, the societies, the lecturers, the postgraduates will be forgotten.
And it won’t even matter that no one remembers, postgraduates. Because none of us has ever achieved anything. Because we could barely keep our departments open. Because we couldn’t even hand over functioning European philosophy departments to the next generation. Because there barely is a next generation. Just you, postgraduates. The last of the last.
It’s best forgotten, European philosophy, postgraduates. Best buried in the memory. It came, it went, without meaning. It achieved nothing worth keeping. Nothing important happened. Nothing that lasted.
An episode, that’s all. A failed experiment. A flare up. A fever. An outbreak. That was only ever a bad influence. That only ever led to misplaced dreams of revolution. Of the reforming of the English heart. To unhealthy preoccupations with the apocalyptic. With the messianic!
For a while, philosophy caught a European fever. For a while, there was a taste for European philosophical fireworks. The desire for some European colour.
There was a moment when things were allowed to go weird. Go dark. Follow strange European gods. The philosopher-obscurantists. Language-maulers. Thought-distorters. Stranglers of reason.
For a time, when no one really knew what was happening, European thought was allowed through. European thought! That stood in no English lineage. That was part of no UK tradition! European ideas, that were unsummarisable-in-clear-English. Endlessly prolix. Frustratingly convoluted. Jargon-rich. Neologism-heavy. Full of puns. Of poetry! That murdered the possibility of civilized debate.
They tried to contain it, the analytics. They tried to place UK-style philosophy guardrails around it. To teach it as part of the history of philosophy. As the history of crazy ideas! Of folly! But for a while – the glory years – it spread like wildfire.
They blamed the vast expansion of universities, the analytic philosophers. The lowering of entry requirements. When our kind were brought into the academy. From the working classes! From the council estates! With dubious A-levels! With poor grades! When our type were actually allowed to do MAs and PhDs, to ascend the academic hierarchy.
And our kind naturally tended towards European-style thought, which is to say, charlatan thought. Impressing-only-idiots thought. We were inclined to hysteria. To revolutionary dreams and, God knows, messianic ones. To literary thought. To pathos-drenched thought. And there weren’t enough allies – analytic stalwarts – to hold us back.
We weren’t analytic-philosophised-up, that was the trouble. We weren’t inoculated against European fever. We didn’t have a natural English sobriety to count on. Natural English liberalism. We had no sense of stranger danger.
Gone were the days when philosophy departments were filled with approved Oxbridge analytic philosophers. When keen young analytic philosophers were sent out from Oxbridge to colonise the provinces! To secure academic the kingdom! To drive out British idealism and other dubious things once and for all. To clear and hold analytic hegemony.
For a time, they essentially lost control, postgraduates. Our numbers were too great. They were blindsided. They’d their guard down. It took time for them to marshal their resources. To weaponise research culture. To get opinion onside. To plunge our departments down the league tables. To disparage our journals. Our book series … To close us down! As we no doubt deserved to be closed down! We were driven to the edges – the outer edges. To the most dubious universities.
Their plans worked, postgraduates. The European philosophy departments were closed down, one by one. European thought was strangled in the UK – in philosophy departments, at least. Oh, it went on in Literature departments. In Modern Languages departments. But only in a parodic way. Only in an aping the greats way.
But then Cicero came along ….
Work in Progress 